I glanced back, though my eyes were blurry, and all I could see was a massive hulking shape. He came closer, and knelt to me, putting a hand on my shoulder before I realized who it was.
Ben Andor.
Right. He was here. I’d been kissing him. I wanted to forget and now— “Hey, is everything okay—”
I shrugged his hand away and stumbled to my feet. I forced out, “I’m fine.”
“But—”
“I said I’m fine,” I snapped. All I wanted to do was break into pieces and be carried off by that silent, dead wind. Because there wasn’t a world without my father’s stupid parlor playlists and his cheesy jokes and his bear hugs.
That world didn’t exist. It couldn’t.
And I didn’t know how to exist in a world without him in it.
A moment later, Rose was there, shoving Ben Andor away from me. “What the hell did you do?!”
He was baffled. “Nothing!”
“The fuck you did!” She dug into her purse for the pepper spray. He quickly held up his hands and hurried back into the bar. She turned then to me and hugged me tightly, asking me what he’d done, what had happened.
“He died,” I said.
“Ben?”
“Dad.” I felt a sob bubble up in my throat, like a bird wanting to be set free, and then I gave a wail and buried my face into my best friend’s shoulder, on the curb of an empty street, while the world spun on, and on, and on, without my dad in it.
And the wind did not sing.
7
Days Gone
DAYS GONE FUNERAL Home sat at the perfect junction between Corley and Cobblemire Roads. It sat there so patiently, like an ancient ward on the corner, looming over the rest of the small town of Mairmont, South Carolina, like a benevolent grim reaper. It stood at exactly the right height in exactly the center of the plot of land, and it looked the way it always had: old and stoic and sure.
The funeral home had been a staple in Mairmont for the last century, passed from Day to Day to Day with love and care. Everyone in Mairmont knew the Days. They knew Xavier and Isabella Day, my parents, and knew that they loved their job, and us children—Florence, Carver, and Alice Day—who didn’t love the funeral home as much as our parents, but we loved it enough. We Days dealt in death like accountants dealt in money and lawyers dealt in fees. And because of this, we Days weren’t like the other people of Mairmont. Everyone said that when a Day was born, they were already wearing funeral clothes. We treated death with the kind of celebration most people only ever reserved for life.
No one understood my family. Not really.
Not even me, to be honest.
But when it was time, everyone in Mairmont agreed that they’d rather be buried by a Day than anyone else on earth.
I never thought I would come back to Mairmont. Not like this, with a small carry-on suitcase and a backpack with my laptop and an extra toothbrush in tow. My hometown sat in the liminal space between Greenville and Asheville, so close to the state line you could walk up to the Ridge, spit off it, and hit North Carolina. It was the epitome of nowhere, and I used to love it.
But that was a very, very long time ago.
Somehow, I had managed to snag an Uber who’d drive me from Charlotte to Mairmont, and when the Prius pulled down Main Street, it looked just like it did in my memories. South Carolina was warmer than New York; the Bradford pears that lined the roads already unfurling their green leaves, speckled with white flowers. The sun had set, but it still bled reds and oranges into the horizon like a watercolor painting, and my dad was dead.
It was weird how the thought just appeared like that.